Heather Ciar puts one of her reptiles back in a cage. Chronicle photo by John Storey

Heather Ciar puts one of her reptiles back in a cage. Chronicle photo by John Storey

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Heather Ciar holds a boa constrictor named Scylla, which is one of about 30 rescued snakes that she keeps at her home. Chronicle photo by John Storey

Heather Ciar holds a boa constrictor named Scylla, which is one of about 30 rescued snakes that she keeps at her home. Chronicle photo by John Storey

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Heather Ciar feeds a dead rat to Roswell, a ball python that was rescued and brought to live with other reptiles in her home. Chronicle photo by John Storey

Heather Ciar feeds a dead rat to Roswell, a ball python that was rescued and brought to live with other reptiles in her home. Chronicle photo by John Storey

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Ciar holds one of seven coturnix quail that she accepted as an animal rescue. Chronicle photo by John Storey

Ciar holds one of seven coturnix quail that she accepted as an animal rescue. Chronicle photo by John Storey

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Caring for critters / Woman turns her home into an animal rescue shelter

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Seven quail are right now sitting in a small wire cage in the backyard of a middle-class home near Santa Rosa.

Which is far removed from the place they were originally destined: a cook pot.

They don't have names because, well, you don't normally name a quail or a chicken the same way you can a dog or cat. But they seem relatively healthy and happy and in no hurry at all to leave their little cages.

"They were in pretty bad shape when I first put them in here," said their benefactor, Heather Ciar. "They hadn't been fed well, they didn't have feathers here on their backs."

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Then she beams like a new mother and announces, "They just started laying eggs yesterday."

Ciar's backyard was the end of the line in a sort of underground railroad for some of the live animals for sale in Chinatown markets.

Other than in pet stores, it is illegal in California to sell live animals over the counter; nevertheless, it still goes on. Sometimes the buyers are well-meaning animal lovers who can't bear to see the critters stuffed in cages awaiting the ax, or pot of boiling water.

It is not illegal to own or keep most of these animals as pets in San Francisco. The law forbids housing any animal that is wild or dangerous, and you can't have large animals like horses, cows or pigs. You can have chickens, though by law not more than four small animals of any kind.

The quail, for example, were bought by Eleonor England. She lives in Potrero Hill with a small menagerie and a very large dog named Riley. She said she bought two chickens and the quail after seeing the animals at a market.

That led to a couple of frantic postings on Craigslist, a response by Ciar and new homes for the heretofore condemned birds.

Ciar has been rescuing animals for about five years. Mostly, it's reptiles. She has about 30 snakes, five frogs and toads, about 100 geckos of all types and sizes, a couple of chickens, a parrot, three cats, a dozen rats (used mostly as food) and now the quail.

"I just can't say no," she said.

Animal rights activists say England is not the only person to rescue animals from the market, but it's not a widespread practice. For one thing, there are few markets in the state where live animals are sold; mostly they are in San Francisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, Sacramento and Stockton.

Almost everyone who works with animals, or animal rights, knows someone who buys turtles or chickens at the market. Carl Freedman, director of animal control for San Francisco, said his office occasionally gets calls from rescuers. More often, the rescued animal ends up at the pound.

Eric Mills, coordinator for Action for Animals, said market rescues are usually done on the spur of the moment.

A person, not necessarily an animal lover, will go to the market, see the chickens or turtles waiting to die and buy them with no thought of what will happen later, he said.

There are several organizations that specialize in animal rescue. Some deal with reptiles, others with birds or fowl, and still more help abused dogs, especially the ones no one wants, like pit bulls.

And then there are the individuals who decide, on their own, to help out. Like Ciar.

It's been a problem for as long as the controversy over the live markets in Chinatown has been going on. Sometimes with disastrous results.

People would buy turtles or frogs at the market, realize they didn't want to, or couldn't, take care of them and then release them into the wild. Which, in this case, means Golden Gate Park or Lake Merritt in Oakland.

The animals would either quickly die, because they were bred in captivity, or they would kill all manner of other species. Stow Lake in Golden Gate Park is thick with turtles and frogs that were not born there.

Animal activist groups have spread the word to discourage such "buy-and- release" activities, and they believe it has been effective. And that has led to the quandary of people like England, who want to save animals but don't know what to do with them.

After England brought her chickens and quail home, she realized: "Now what?"

She lives in a small apartment with a smaller backyard and several neighbors. The quail walked around in little coveys inside and the chickens, which appeared "slow" from poor breeding, just sat around in small cages.

England took them outside surreptitiously during the day, when her neighbors worked, and then had to worry about them inside all night.

So she posted on Craigslist.com. "While off my 'medication' I saved them from an untimely death in Chinatown (surely no 'sane' person would have done that . . .)."

Ciar saw the posting and offered to take the chickens and the quail. She found another home, in the South Bay, for the chickens and kept the quail for herself. They will, if she has any say in it, become part of an aviary she wants to build when she and her husband move to a farm.

England doesn't consider herself an animal activist. She grew up on an apple orchard in Washington and was around animals all her life. She says she likes them, but isn't particularly rabid, so to speak, about it.

What set her off was the demeanor of the chickens, if chickens can be said to have a demeanor. They were listless, she said. They didn't look healthy enough to eat.

"We have to treat humans and animals with respect," she said. "I didn't think the chickens were being treated very well."

And Ciar, who can't turn away any animal, isn't even a vegetarian. She has no problem eating meat, because that is the nature of things. Her snakes eat meat, too. Often, she has to kill baby rats to feed the red-tail boas and corn snakes.

She demonstrates how she holds the baby rats by neck and tail, then pulls and twists, breaking their necks. It is a quick and painless death, she said. Still, she said, she has trouble killing the cute ones. She kills the ugly ones first.

The purpose is to train the snakes to eat dead food. A lot of people feed them live rats or mice, which she says is not as healthy. For one thing, live rats will fight back and sometimes rip and mangle a snake. Live rats sometimes carry other vermin harmful to the snake.

And then there is the emotional aspect of it. Feed a snake live food and the snake will associate that hand coming into its cage with meal time.

Ciar buys most of her snake food online and stores it in her freezer. It is,

as she says, not for the faint of heart. There are plastic bags filled with tiny frozen rat bodies. Those are next to plastic bags containing the frozen remains of snakes that came to her too late.

She freezes the snakes to perform necropsies later, as part of her training to become a veterinary technician.

"I just want to give them a good life," she says of her reptiles. "I believe life is sacred. Snakes eat meat, so it's all right to kill a rat to feed a snake. But there's no reason to abuse an animal, any animal.

"I think that's what drives any of us who perform rescues. We just don't want any animal to suffer." . Anyone who needs information about reptiles or needs to have one rescued can reach Ciar at reptiles@ciar.org.